The Spectacle Blog

CNN has this story about how Republicans are cursed by London citing Mitt Romney's 2012 statement about London's lack of preparedness in hosting that summer's Olympics, Chris Christie's recent comments on vaccines and now Scott Walker's refusal to answer a question about evolution.

You can criticize Walker for choosing not to answer the question on evolution. But why was such a question posed in the first place? Is creationism being taught in Wisconsin public schools? The only reason for such a question was so that the press could paint Walker as a some type of religious zealot. Walker would have damned whether or not he answered the question.

MJ Lee writes:

The U.K. can be a particularly challenging place for members of the GOP because the party's ideological views do not all fit neatly into the that country's political conversation.

I think it would be more accurate to say that the GOP's ideological views do not all fit neatly into CNN's political conversations.

I just found out that 60 Minutes correspondent Bob Simon was killed in a car crash this evening on New York City's West Side Highway. He was 73.

I first took notice of him when he and his news crew were held in captivity during the Gulf War in 1991. For nearly 20 years, Simon has been at 60 Minutes. He did tend to be quite anti-Israel in his reporting and a few years back I wrote a blog post critical of his 60 Minutes report on anti-Christian violence in Israel. Frankly, life is far more perilous for Christians in places like Iraq, Syria and Nigeria than in Israel.

Criticism notwithstanding, I do feel some sadness here. I don't know if he was being driven home, but he probably had plans for later this evening and likely the long weekend. And now his life has been snuffed out in an instant. I cannot imagine what his family must be going through right now.

I did not find out about the Chapel Hill shootings that claimed the lives of three Muslims until Ross e-mailed me a link to his blog post from this morning.

Ross makes reference to my post in which I ask how President Obama would react to a shooting at a Muslim deli in light of his and other members of his administration characterizing the attack at the Hyper Cacher grocery store in Paris last month as a random attack as opposed to one motivated by anti-Semitism.

As Ross states, "Unfortunately, today Obama can actually answer almost that exact question."

Naturally, I wish it was a question Obama didn't have to answer. Two of the three victims had just been married last December. All three were under the age of 25 and had their whole lives ahead of them and now it's all over just like that.

My AmSpec colleague Aaron Goldstein asked yesterday "Would The Obama Admin Have Called An Attack on a Muslim Deli Random?"

Unfortunately, today Obama can actually answer almost that exact question given the news of the horrendous murder on Tuesday of three Muslim students by a man named Craig Hicks in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Giving an honest answer in this case would put the administration in a tough spot: Based on his Facebook page, Hicks vehemently disliked Islam...but he also vehemently disliked any and every religion.

It would be most interesting if the administration tries to spin this as "anti-Muslim" when they wouldn't go anywhere near "anti-Jewish" or "anti-Semitic" regarding the Paris deli attack, not least because this attack seems as much anti-religion as anti-a-specific-religion.

NBC News has suspended Brian Williams without pay for six months as a consequence of his lie about being under RPG attack while reporting from Iraq in 2003 and repeating that lie repeatedly. The suspension is effective immediately.

So what happens in six months from now? Will Williams quietly return in the haze of summer? Or will he be replaced?

Baseball site “Cut 4” is reporting that the 56 year-old Franco has signed to manage and play this year with the Million Stars of Japan’s semi-pro Baseball Challenge League. Seems we just can’t keep Julio out of the lineup, no matter how long in the tooth he gets.

Franco was born in Hato Mayor, Dominican Republic, in the middle of Dwight Eisenhower’s second term as president. His major league debut came on April 23 of 1982 when he played shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies. His last game in the bigs came in September of 2007 with the Braves when Franco was 49 years old, well past retirement age, even for knuckle-ball pitchers. He became the oldest regularly playing position player in Major League history.

Mark Twain said if you don’t read the newspaper you’re uninformed. If you do, you’re misinformed. Our Samuel Langhorne wrote before TV news and Brian Williams, or he would have included our winsome but imaginative newsreader in his cynicism.

In the wake of Williams’ admission that he lied (OK, his words were he misremembered) about how a chopper he flew in over Iraq was hit by a rocket propelled grenade, Rasmussen polled folks on what Williams’ future should be a NBC News. The results are hardly encouraging for fans of the truth.

Of those responding to the poll, the results of which were released Monday, 40 percent say Williams should resign from NBC. Another 35 percent say he shouldn’t resign. A confused 25 percent admit they don’t know what to make of it.

So there you have it. If Rasmussen’s 800 respondents are representative of the country — Rasmussen claims a margin of error of +/- 3.5 percent — then 60 percent of Americans either think it’s OK to have a liar for a news presenter or aren’t sure this is a problem. Can we no longer even muster a majority for the truth?

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